The Industrial Revolutionaries

This book is a fascinating look at the history of the "Industrial Revolution". 

It is written using the stories of the people involved more than the technical details of the inventions and systems that created our modern world.  I have lots of technical books, but this one is a great read, mainly because it is the social and personal "glue" that held all the technical changes together.
For me the amazing links in time, between many of these interesting, eccentric, brilliant, and sometimes tragic, characters, helps to bring the Industrial Revolution into better focus.
From the jacket blurb:

The conventional story of the Industrial Revolution is that of the tinkering inventor who makes a discovery that sets in motion a process of incredible change: Watt and his steam engine, Eli Whitney and his cotton gin, or Samuel Morse's telegraph.  But that dusty narrative, with it's dry collection of dates, eureka moments, and the ensuing lifeless march of machines is turned on its head in The Industrial Revolutionaries, Gavin Weightman's tour-de-force of social history. For as Weightman shows, the Industrial Revolution was nothing less than a period with the most dramatic, profound, and rapid change in the history of the world.  

Highly recommended addition to the bookshelf!

Title
The Industrial Revolutionaries 
The making of the Modern World
1776-1914
Author
Gavin Weightman
Publisher
Grove Press
New York
Date
2007
ISBN
978-0-8021-1899-8

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ